AALL Spectrum Blog

The AALL Spectrum® Blog is published by the American Association of Law Libraries. Submissions from AALL members and other members of the legal community are highly encouraged. Opinions and editorial views expressed are those of the authors and do not represent the official position of AALL. AALL does not assume any responsibility for statements advanced by contributors. The previous Spectrum Blog was located at aallspectrum.wordpress.com.

We are live!In my last blog post, I wrote about our decision to switch from
Millennium to Koha.After a smooth
transition of our data from our old ILS, many decisions about the new user
interface and settings, and an excellent 2 ½ day staff training with ByWater
Solutions, we went live in mid-January—righton schedule.

Here is a link to our new OPAC: https://catalog.law.rutgers.edu/We have a fully functioning ILS system and are
very happy with ByWater Solutions, who helped with the migration and who we are
continuing to use for support.Note that
we have not fully designed our OPAC landing page, as we are working on the
resolution of a few last-minute issues that remain(ed) after our Go Live
date.

One issue was a delay in getting our user
authentication (LDAP) working for purposes of logging in to the catalog.However, this has been resolved and works
perfectly in Koha.

The other lingering issue is that Koha’s search
engine (Zebra) does not seem to work very well for us.The good news is that there appears to be a
solution to this problem.We are working
with ByWater Solutions to implement VuFind, an open source Discovery Layer that
gives us outstanding results when we use it to search our catalog.See our Beta Version: https://catalog.law.rutgers.edu/vufind/In case you are worried about whether this is
costing us extra, it is not!We worked
this out with ByWater ahead of time.In
the final stages of our implementation, we will be replacing the Koha catalog search
with VuFind.At this point we will be able to use VuFind as
a true discovery layer, allowing us to integrate our catalog search results
with results from HeinOnline and other databases.More information about VuFind: http://vufind-org.github.io/vufind/

from one system to the other.Next week we have a 2 ½ day training.So far so good!

“The deleterious effects of racial microaggressions…are cloaked within an invisible White veil. In this manner, perpetrators are allowed to enjoy the benefits that accrue to them because of their skin color. They resist the realization that Whiteness, White supremacy, and White privilege are three interlocking forces that disguise covert forms of racism. It allows many Whites to continue their oppressive and harmful ways while maintaining their collective advantage and individual innocence.” (Microaggressions in Everyday Life , Dr. Derald Wing Sue).

Why talk about race?

The short answer to why we need to be able to have meaningful discussions about race is that America has a long history of racial discrimination and it continues to impact all realms of society, including universities and law libraries, both as places of learning and as places of employment.

After arriving in Tennessee and noticing the state of race relations, I found myself in a position where I was alone in a new city with no tools to deal with the racial climate. I could no longer ignore the reality of contemporary overt acts of racism after being personally targeted by vandals. This lone hate-filled act triggered my awareness of racism and implicit bias and drove me to intensely research the history of racism in the South and the social science theories related to racism in elite institutions in America.

These academic articles gave me a vocabulary to describe the everyday racism that I was experiencing. You could say that I became black, the scholarly term for this is nigrescence and people usually undergo this transformational experience in their teen years. I was well overdue.

I grew up in the majority in my home country of Trinidad and Tobago. As a creole person, I had privilege in that society. Before moving here from California I had not really developed any kind of identity specifically tied to my African heritage. Culturally, we Trinidadians believe (although we sometimes fall short of this in practice) that it is morally wrong to segregate based on race or to hang ones identity on a racial identity tied to countries that we have never seen. We are Trinis not African Trinidadians or Indian Trinidadians, although we have no problem celebrating our race related traditions, like Divali, Eid-ul-Fitr and Shouter Baptist Day. These are celebrations of our diversity, not a dehumanization of the other based on race.

No one in my mixed creole family had ever made a big deal about the fact that we had some African ancestors. We were culturally Trinidadian and focusing on any specific nationality from our heritage seemed forced and artificial. I never spent much time thinking about it until I moved to Nashville even though most of the American communities that I participated in were predominantly white, because I had never felt viewed as “a black” (as opposed to being viewed as a black person). That is to say, I had never before felt dehumanized because of any of my physical features that might reflect African phenotypic traits. So being black in America is new for me and now I spend a lot of time thinking about it.

On the 50th anniversary of The March on Washington, I attended a commemoration event at the Benton Chapel on Vanderbilt campus. The Chapel was almost empty, but at this event, I met some like minded people and I began participating in diversity programming, including three panel discussions and two Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Days (2014 & 2015). Throughout all of this, I was still repressing my own rage which, in spite of my measured tones and carefully curated anti-racist rhetoric, continued to undermine the effectiveness of the message that I was trying to deliver. Friends and mentors (including job search guru Leslie Ayres), had been encouraging me to develop a mindful meditation practice to help me cope with the stress of everyday racism. When I began exploring this practice, using the works of Pema Chodron and Byron Katie, things began to improve.

I realized that if this was a problem for me, it was probably a problem for others. Given the outreach that librarians routinely do and that I personally do on campus, I was poised to be an informal minority outreach librarian. I wanted to provide support to minority students who were being routinely subjected to racial microaggressions. I could be the law school representative who would not minimize or invalidate their experiences. But, since the responsibilities of a diversity outreach librarian were not part of my formal job description, I was, and continue to be, haunted by fears that this would backfire on me since this leaves me open to the reverse racism claims that are more likely in the South. Still, in spite of my concerns and lack of protection (as an at-will staff employee), students come to me, telling me about bias incidents that they were reluctant or unwilling to share with the administration, and I continue to look for ways to have productive workplace conversations about race and racism.

Even now, I still struggle, and the racial microaggressions perpetrated by library patrons require me to be a spiritual warrior. Think of that pro se patron who walks in at 4:55 and is rude and dismissive to you while also asking you for help. It’s like that only these incidents do not occur in a social vacuum. It’s not just the bad attitude that you deal with, but also with the very real racial emotions that people of color experience when operating within a racist social hierarchy.

What that means in practice is that even when I point out these problems, they may be minimized and my experience may be invalidated, so I need to respond with patience. This is a very touchy subject and if people (even nice, well-intentioned people) can find a way to explain it as an individual incident unrelated to racist attitudes then they will.

For those who are interested, there are many informal articles cropping up on the Internet that can teach you how to be more mindful about the things that you say and do such that you reduce the likelihood of being unintentionally offensive by perpetrating racial microaggressions. Some right wing conservatives believe that racial microaggressions are merely liberals trying to control language and thought. In anticipation of the increasing population of patrons of color who will be gracing our libraries, I posit that it might be time to prepare ourselves as librarians with a little cultural competency and emotional intelligence, because “our unconscious biases negatively impact other people” and because microaggressions do happen in libraries. Moreover as educators, academic law librarians have a responsibility to create an environment in which all of our patrons are treated respectfully and where all librarians can expect to be respected and to get support from the administration when they are subjected to repeated microaggressions that can cause race-based traumatic stress. In fact, all types of libraries may be opening themselves up to potential law suits if they do not address the racial microaggressions in the workplace.

If you are interested in talking about race in your library, check out my next blog post, on How to talk about race in the library. Here's a preview: the short answer is with great kindness.

Law students are inundated with complex
legal concepts the moment they enter law school. So when we teach legal
research, it’s best to avoid distracting them with the substantive aspect of legal
terms and concepts, and keep them focused on the research process. We can do
this by avoiding complex or specialized terms and topics (for example, res ipsa loquitur), and instead provide
easy to understand, memorable, real-life examples (for example, Intentional
Infliction of Emotional Distress), or examples drawn from multidisciplinary
fields. These examples can help to clarify the meaning of the legal concept or
term by analogy. Below are some suggestions of how this would work.

Compare
and contrast a similar, multidisciplinary item or term

Compare, for example, legal dictionaries
and encyclopedias to their “regular” (multidisciplinary) counterparts. Pointing
out the differences highlights the unique aspect of the legal resource.

Difference: Legal
version not only focuses exclusively on legal concepts, but adds annotations to
primary and secondary law as further reading on the concept.

Example:
Term: “Annotations”

Compare
Annotations to footnotes:

They cite the source they quote, so they help you
locate that source and verify its authority.

They provide further reading on that particular topic.

Example:
Terms: “Primary v. secondary sources”

We
usually explain this concept by saying that primary sources contain the law,
and secondary sources help you to understand the law and provide footnotes and
annotations to the primary source they cite. Illustrate this with
multidisciplinary examples:

Secondary
source: A book written by 20th
century author that analyzes texts of 18th century diaries to
explain or interpret the mindset of 18th century people, with
footnotes that cite the diaries. The book may paraphrase the text from the
diaries to save space or illustrate the author’s interpretation.

Primary
Source: A print of original diaries
by 18th century people. The diaries contain the actual, original
text by 18th century people, which is open to interpretation and
analysis by modern authors.

This example also helps to illustrate to students why
it’s best to check the language of the primary (original) source, like a statute
or case law. In secondary sources, the author may paraphrase the language to
serve their purpose or analysis. So to read the most accurate version of the
language, you need to go to the source, which is the language of the statute,
case, or 18th century diary.

Compare and contrast similar legal
items

Example: how are treatises different
from “regular” books about legal topics?

Atreatise on
Copyright: will focus on explaining and summarizing the law in an organized
manner, so you get a sense of the area of the law as a whole. Subtopics related
to each other will be organized under the over-arching topic.

A “regular”
book about copyright: will often deal
with a specialized topic (like Art and Copyright). It may discuss the law in
relation to or in context of multidisciplinary topics (like social, political
or historical issues). Its focus may be the author’s arguments or agenda. It’s
not as concerned with introducing and summarizing the law in an easy to
understand, organized manner, although it may do so in context of its topic.

Ask:
What is the research purpose of a source?

Example:
Show what the student will have to do without
the secondary source

Sometimes, it’s useful to focus on the
purpose of your source with an illustrative question, and show how it provides
a useful editorial shortcut.

In this example, you can ask the
students:

Would you prefer to:

Read the whole 200+
pages of the Clean Water Act; OR

Read a 5-page summary of the Act’s content and
effect in a legal treatise on environmental law?

“Would you prefer to:

Read through a
multiplicity of cases to find how judges define a term; OR,

Use a dictionary
or a Words and Phrases set to find how the term is commonly used or defined by
courts?

Use
Simple Concepts

As stated above, avoid abstract, complex
legal concepts to illustrate your research example, since you want the students
to focus on the research process.

USE…

EXAMPLE

Colorful,
memorable terms

Trade Dress

Memorable
situations &concepts

·Dog Bite

·Intentional
Infliction of Emotional Distress

Everyday
Situations applying to many people

Law of…

·Tenant security
deposits

·TV or computer
warranties

Distinct,
easily visualized Institutions, issues, etc.

Law of…

·Hospitals

·Divorce

Even if the legal topic itself may be
complex (for example, the law regulating hospitals), you really don’t need to
move beyond where you find the law itself, so the topic may still answer the
simplicity standards. The goal is for students to easily determine what key
terms they should be using for their research, rather than having them focus on
the fact pattern or legal concept.